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After a two-week vacation that included stops in Chicago and San Francisco. I'll post more on my impressions of the San Francisco sports scene - or lack thereof - in a later entry.

For now, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on the Tour de France.

**** Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert ***

Maybe it's because I got a chance to see Barry Bonds play live a week and a half ago, but my inner cynic has been awakened while waching the Tour. Or maybe it's because guys seem to get busted for drug offenses every week or so in cycling. (but no dog-fighting ... so far).

The guy that aroused my cynicism today is Alexandre Vinokourov, aka Vino. The guy has a reputation as a dashing sort, who will throw everything into that day's ride, regardless of the future implications. So sometimes he's great, and sometimes ... not so much.

To be fair during this tour Vino's riding with a couple of achy knees and he was involved in a crash as well. So I was impressed when he came out of nowhere to dominate the individual time trial on Saturday.

And I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when Vino cracked on Sunday and lost, oh, about a half hour of time in a long mountain stage.

By today, though, I was starting to roll my eyes at Vino's roller coaster ride. This time he was back on the upswing, breaking away to win a long mountain stage.

As Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin gushed over Vino's remarkable ability come back after seemingly being left for dead, I couldn't help but wonder how the guy can be so good just a day after being so bad. Is it great heart, as Sherwin and Liggett continually suggested? Or may he just really dogs it on the days when he doesn't feel so good.

I realize that may be blasphemy to Vino fans, but surely I'm not the only one who has such thoughts. And I'm sure, given cycling's cozy relationship with performance-enhancing drugs, that I'm not the only one who wonders, at least a little, when a rider makes such a dramatic one-day turnaround, a la Floyd Landis in the 2006 tour.

Having said that, I still really enjoy watching the Tour, despite all the drug allegations. So maybe I'm not such a cynic.

...

Or maybe that makes me a total cynic.